


Hiraeth

by SandrC



Series: Eldritch-tober 2020 [1]
Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: At the Mountains of Dadness - Freeform, Eye Trauma (mentioned), Nothing explicit but reminiscent, Pain and its purpose, Spoilers for the end of ATMOD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26765920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: Homesickness or nostalgia; an earnest longing or desire; a sense of regretStud and his eyes (or lack thereof)
Series: Eldritch-tober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950820
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> Instead of doing whumptober — because the world is a nightmare and I'm a little pressed for time and energy — I've decided to do Eldritch-tober. So please appreciate the first of 31 short stories using mostly ATMOD but occasionally DNDADS proper!
> 
> Anyway its just a thinly veiled excuse for me to write ATMOD, tbh.
> 
> Prompt 01: Eyes

It doesn't hurt any more.

It's a strange thought to have, he thinks idly, when he has the chance to think.

It doesn't hurt.

_Any more._

Maybe it's foolish to take for granted things you have, like hands or voices or _eyes_. Maybe it's foolish to think that things that go bump in the dark are content taking _physical_ parts of you. Maybe the childish fear of being eaten is better than adult realization that you won't be. That it will let you go, _choose_ to not consume you, and you have to live with the knowledge that you were spared when _others were not._

The train rocks back and forth as Hildy reads and Stud fights to school his thoughts to the lack of pain and not the memory of static and imperfection and black ooze dripping across his cheeks as Gertrude jams his face into her chest and the whirring buzzing of a moviola—

It doesn't hurt any more and that is more dangerous than it hurting.

Pain is a way for the body to check itself, to remind itself that it is pushing _too far_ , that _this_ is the point of no return. This _new_ thing, this information spun into cellophane strips and woven into blades that tear and _take_?

_It does not hurt._

It just _takes_. Replaces. Sticks deep in the holes where it has removed something important.

And the place where his eyes used to be—covered with sunglasses and painted thinly over with smiles and compliments and fumbling stumbling apologies—are holes it lives in.

He _wishes_ it would hurt. That would be a light in the tunnel, something he could think about. But it _doesn't_.

It doesn't hurt in the slightest.

So he has to focus on _that_ instead.


End file.
